


head caught flame

by jolach



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: 2018-2019 NHL Season, Body Modification, Hair, M/M, Philadelphia Flyers, Service Kink, a soupçon of gender, description of injury, my obsession with tk sitting on sinks, the ever-present dread inherent to being a Flyer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-20
Updated: 2019-09-20
Packaged: 2020-10-24 23:24:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20714285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jolach/pseuds/jolach
Summary: Travis can’t believe Patty has a dope secret haircut.





	head caught flame

Patty won’t even let Travis look at it, which is weird.

Normally he’s sneaky proud to show off injuries, the grosser-looking the better. He got a black eye playing roller hockey last offseason—Travis has never gotten so many random selfies from him in a week.

But when Travis cranes his neck up as they walk to the car and tries to spot where the puck hit him—right under the ear, Jesus, it still makes Travis’s stomach drop—Pat flinches away and shoves him in the shoulder. “Back off, dude.”

Travis readjusts the strap of his bag on his shoulder. “Since when are you shy?” he asks, drifting back into Patty’s personal space.

So he wants to see it. Sue him. Pats had hit the ice like he’d been fucking shot and half bled like it, too. If he says he’s good, he’s good, but Travis still likes to make sure with his own eyes. “How gross can it be?”

“How gross can _you_ be,” Pats mutters, stride speeding up.

“That doesn’t make any–”

“–Trav, drop it,” he says, and Travis makes a face at his back. Usually Pat only gets pissy after an injury if he thinks it’s gonna keep him from playing, and he passed concussion protocol. Probably didn’t take his painkillers. And now somehow that’s Travis’s problem.

Pat puts the music on loud as soon as Travis starts the car, which could mean his head doesn’t hurt that much or could mean he’s about to pass out. “You still wanna do dinner tonight?” Travis asks as he pulls out of the parking garage. They have tomorrow off, which usually means they go out somewhere downtown and eat too much before staying up playing COD or Fortnite or whatever Pats is obsessed with that month.

“Maybe order in?” Patty says, grimacing. “What’s that place with the spicy noodles? That.”

Travis does like those noodles. “If you wanna just go to sleep, it’s fine, we don’t have to–”

“Ugh, no, don’t let this shit ruin my _whole_ night,” Pats says, and Travis grins and steps on the gas. “Seriously, dude, what’s the restaurant? We can pick something up.”

\---

Travis leaves Patty on the couch to go get the food, but when he comes back with the bags the living room is empty.

The bathroom light is on and the door is open. Travis sets the food on the coffee table and walks quietly over.

Pats has his hair pulled away from his ear and is peering into the mirror. Until—

“Jesus!”

—he spots Travis in the doorway.

“Can you, like—Jesus Christ,” Pats says, leaning against the sink as Travis giggles. Holy shit, the way he _jumped._ “Why aren’t you that quiet the rest of the time? Fuck.”

“Whatcha lookin’ at, bud?” Travis asks, sidling into the bathroom. It’s his bathroom. He can be in here if he wants.

“You are so fucking annoying,” Pats mumbles, but he sighs and turns so Travis can finally see what the fuck happened to him.

The first thing Travis focuses on is the angry-looking black stitches marching neatly through Pat’s skin behind his ear. “Oh, shit, Frankenstein,” Travis says. He tilts his head to get a better look. “Sick.” It looks like it hurts like a motherfucker, but it’s way less swollen than he thought it would be.

Pats mumbles something, but Travis misses it. “Huh?”

“They had to shave it,” Patty says, staring vaguely in the direction of Travis’s shower. “To do the stitches.”

Oh. Fuck. Travis hadn’t even noticed, but he’s right—the area with the stitches is buzzed down, a lopsided chunk of fuzz in the middle of Pat’s long hair. Of course. “Aw, bud, that sucks.”

“It’s fine,” Pats says, shaking the rest of his hair over the shaved spot. You can’t really see it if you don’t already know it’s there. “It’s not a big deal.”

“Yeah, but, like, I get that it’s annoying–”

“I’m not annoyed,” Pats says, in his annoyed voice. “Let me out of your bathroom.”

Travis stands aside and lets Patty brush past him. “Sorry I called you Frankenstein.”

\---

Travis watches Patty mow through, like, half a dozen zombies. “Nice,” he says through a mouth full of cold noodles.

“Hell yeah,” Pats says distractedly, feet up on the coffee table between empty takeout containers and beer cans. Travis has no idea what time it is. These nights are the best—the most fun he’s had this season, which is something he’s normally better at not thinking about.

They did win tonight. And he helped—two goals, for once. Would have been better if Patty hadn’t been down for the count. Again. Shit isn’t fair.

Travis pops the tab off the empty can in his hand and flicks it out into the darkness of the living room. This is probably what normal twenty-one-year-olds do. In, like, college and stuff. If Travis had ended up going to college he’d probably be doing the exact same thing right now. Not with Patty, though.

“We could shave your head,” Travis says. His head is swimming; he doesn’t know how that thought floated to the top. He puts the noodles down and levers himself off the couch. Gotta get some water.

Patty snorts. “You first, bud.”

Travis pulls a mug out of his kitchen cabinet and fills it up with cold water from the sink. He drains half of it before filling it up again. “You want some water?” Pat grunts, so Travis fills up a second mug.

He sits down as a horde of zombies starts to overtake Patty’s character. “Fuck,” Pat mumbles. Then– “Fuck!”

“Don’t throw my controller,” Travis says as the death screen pops up.

“I’m _not,”_ Patty says, and lightly kicks the coffee table instead, making the beer cans rattle. “Ugh.”

“We could shave, like–” Travis says, because this thought keeps happening to him, “Like, half your head.” He drinks his water and tries to think.

“Dude, stop,” Pats says, taking his water mug off the table. “It’s not a big deal.”

Travis is dumb, but he isn’t stupid. “No, like, what is it called,” Travis says, snapping his fingers. “When people do the thing where they shave a little bit.”

Patty squints at him over the mug. “An undercut?”

Pat is a genius. Travis points at him. “Yes!”

“Dude, I don’t wanna look like Skrillex.”

Travis is already pulling Google up on his phone. “Bud, no, it could be so cool–”

“There’s no way that’d fly,” Pats says, which isn’t an argument that _he_ doesn’t wanna do it, so Travis keeps scrolling through pictures.

“With who? The boys wouldn’t care, no way,” Travis says. Man. People do some creative shit with their hair. Travis only started growing his past his ears, like, two years ago. “And who gives a fuck what anybody else wants, half the staff, like, just got here.” Somebody’s gotta last here at least a month before they get to tell Patty what to do off the ice.

Pats laughs and drags a hand down his face. “Dude, can you imagine what, like, Don Cherry–”

_“Fuck_ Don Cherry,” Travis says, because Patty is sad. Patty’s been sad for a little bit. Travis scooches down the couch to show Pat some pictures on his phone. “Look, look at these ones, for, like, under ponytails.”

Pats looks.

“Nobody’d, like, even see it,” Travis says. “I couldn’t see the stitches until you showed me, dude.”

Pats takes the phone from his hand.

Travis grins. “Dude. Yes.”

Patty zooms in on a picture. “I can’t.”

\---

Travis plugs in the electric clippers. “Why do you even have these?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Oh, dude, gross.”

\---

Travis wakes up in his own bed, stumbles to his bathroom to brush last night out of his mouth, and steps directly into a pile of hair on his bathroom floor.

“Oh, _shit,”_ he says. Oh, fuck. That had not been a dream.

He shoves the pile out of his way with his foot, brushes his teeth, and then goes to find the dustpan that’s somewhere under his sink.

He makes a detour to his room first to text Pats.

_dude wtf_  
_come downstairs!!!!!_

They can probably find a barber that will take Patty short notice today. Thank Christ they have the day off.

He sweeps up the hair in the bathroom—fuck, there is a lot of it, what did they _do_—and flushes it down the toilet. Pats hasn’t shown yet. Travis will give him another ten minutes before he drags him out of bed. Fuck, what time is it anyway? He looks at his phone. Almost noon.

He goes and fishes a trash bag out from under the sink and starts clearing beer cans and takeout containers off the coffee table.

He remembers bits and pieces. Pats hadn’t had a rubber band or anything. He’d piled his hair up on his head with his hands. He’d been laughing. Travis had—oh, God. He’d sat up on the sink, but he still hadn’t been tall enough. He’d had to—Jesus, he’d had to kneel on the counter.

That’s probably what Patty had been laughing at. Dickhead.

Travis smiles down at the empty beer can in his hand. Wait. Should he be recycling these? He frowns at the trash bag. Does he need a special bin for that? Where do you get bins?

The door to his apartment opens behind him. Travis whips around so fast that his hangover makes him a little seasick.

Pat didn’t even put shoes on, the sick fuck. But other than that he looks—normal? Like, he looks like shit, but the normal amount.

“Oh, nice, you don’t look that fucked up,” Travis says, putting the trash bag down.

Patty squints at him. Travis is pretty sure his shirt is on backwards. “I’m going back to bed,” he mumbles, turning back toward the open door. Travis can’t see any obvious bald spots. This is going way better than he thought it would.

“Drama queen,” Travis says, walking over. “Let me see, bud.” Pats rolls his eyes, but he closes the door.

“I haven’t looked at it, like, in the mirror yet,” Pat says. He sounds calm, but his eyes are flicking around in a way that never means anything good.

Travis frowns. “Your head feel OK?” Pats gives him a look for a second. “Dude, no, I’m hungover too, I mean the stitches.”

“Oh.” Pat frowns like he hasn’t thought about it, which he probably hasn’t. “Not great, but, like, whatever.”

“Cool,” Travis says. He’s got ibuprofen in the bathroom. He crosses his arms over his chest. “Now show me, dude, let’s get it over with.”

“I hate you,” Patty says, but he slides his hands into his own hair and lifts—

“Holy fuck.”

“God, what.”

“Holy _fuck,_ bud.”

Pats gives him his best laser eyes, but Travis really doesn’t care. “Fucking _what,_ what are you laughing at.”

Travis isn’t laughing, but he can feel his grin splitting his face, because– “Dude. It looks sick.”

\---

It needs a little bit of cleaning up, a few patches thicker than others and the line a little wobbly, but—fuck. It’s pretty fucking good.

Travis is sure of it, because he keeps making Pat show him all morning. Well. Afternoon.

“I’m gonna fucking kill you,” Pat says quietly, slapping Travis’s hand away when he reaches down the couch. “Watch Planet Earth.”

“I don’t wanna see the penguin chicks die,” Travis says. “Is it fuzzy?”

“You’ve had short hair before,” Patty mumbles, eyes fixed on the TV.

“Not in a minute,” Travis says, which is true. He didn’t really plan on growing out the flow—he’d kept it short all through juniors. But it’s—heh—it’s grown on him. Annoying that it takes longer to dry, but he hasn’t had an urge to cut it. “Dude. I’ll stop after this.”

“You won’t,” Pats mutters, still watching the fucking Antarctic horror show on the screen, but he hooks a hand behind his ear and lifts the hair up again.

It feels like a magic trick every time. Makes his stomach flip the same way. Travis can’t believe Patty has a dope secret haircut. He can’t believe he helped.

He avoids the stitches and runs his thumb carefully over the horizontal line where the buzzed bit starts. He doesn’t press—just catches the very ends of the hair against the pad of his thumb.

Pats shivers.

“So, so sick,” Travis says.

\---

Travis parks the car. “Nobody’s gonna notice,” he says for probably the hundredth time.

“Notice what,” Patty says, looking at his phone.

“Atta boy.”

In Travis’s defense, at least nobody notices until practice is over.

And it’s just Ghost, anyway, who’s, like, freaky observant. He walks by their stalls after the showers and then backs up. He always looks like a bird, but extra when he’s confused about something. “They have to cut your hair for the stitches, Pat?”

“Yeah,” Pat says, pulling his shirt over his head and offering nothing else, bless him. Travis has gotta learn how to do that.

Ghost just squints at him and moves on. Which would be fine, except—

“Hold on.”

—G has gotten interested.

Patty stares him down, but he doesn’t do anything else as G crosses the room, slips a finger under Patty’s hair, and flips it up to examine it. Travis holds his breath and bounces his leg and tries to pretend to be, like, super interested in his own shoes.

G sighs and lets the curtain of hair fall back down. “I think I’m officially old,” he says, and turns around. “Jake, I don’t understand what the kids are doing anymore. We’re old.”

_“You’re_ old, I’m cool,” Jake says, which sets the whole room off, eager for something to laugh about. Travis grins and tries not to look over where Simmer should be sitting. It still doesn’t feel right. Especially when they’re ganging up on G.

Simmer had sent him a text after the Devils game, when he and Patty had ended up in the box. _Good job Taz_. Travis had sent back a bunch of hearts and then shoved the phone in Pat’s face.

“Why don’t I get a text? I was in there too,” he’d said, eyes slitted.

“Yeah, but I was the one defending your, like, honor,” Travis had said, taking the phone back and sending Simmer some boxing glove emojis for good measure. That had been a good night.

“Defend your own honor,” Pats had mumbled.

“Don’t have any, bud.”

Anyway, after G, nobody looks twice at Patty, except when Provy comes over and mentions quietly that he has a really good hair guy in the city, if Pats needs anything, uh, done, and Patty says he’s good, thanks, and Travis just keeps grinning at his shoes.

\---

It’s not like Pat walks around with his hair up, or anything, so it really _isn’t_ a big deal. It’s funny how much stuff ends up being either, like, reported on in the paper or accidentally a complete secret. Travis has mostly given up on keeping track of who knows what about him.

So he mostly assumes that just the team knows about the hair thing. Until—

“My sisters like it,” Patty says in the car.

Travis looks over. “What?”

“The hair,” Patty says. He’s looking down at his phone. Probably his group chat with his sisters. “They like it.”

_“Fuck_ yeah,” Travis says, slapping the steering wheel. He’s been trying to make inroads with them for months. “Did you tell them I helped? Tell them I helped.”

“They are never gonna think you’re cool, dude—”

“—you’re just jealous—”

“—just because my mum likes you—”

“—all mums like me,” Travis says, which is true. He drums a beat on the wheel, waiting for the light to change. “Good with dads, too. I’m a nice young man.” He turns and gives Patty the cheesiest grin he can manage.

Pats rolls his eyes. “We’ll see.”

“I’m gonna get all their embarrassing stories about you.”

“You’re the most embarrassing thing about me, so.”

\---

Patty still doesn’t put it on his instagram. Travis would show it off, it if were him. Hell, Travis wants to show it off, and it isn’t even his haircut. But as long as he knows Pats isn’t, like, ashamed of it, he’s good. And the fact that it’s secret is cool, too.

\---

They lose the game that Patty has to sit out, which isn’t a surprise, really, but then they keep losing. It shouldn’t feel that weird, given how many games they lost in the fall. But they’d figured out how to win, a little bit. Travis didn’t expect to fall back down the hill now.

Travis is familiar with feeling like shit after a loss, but Jesus, the Leafs game is up there. Three-goal lead, gone. Five Flyers goals, and did Travis even get a point? If he did, he can’t remember it.

Pats barely speaks on the plane home. He does grab Travis’s leg in a vise grip at some point to stop him from bouncing it, which at least means Patty is breathing. Travis lets him pretend to be asleep in the car ride home.

In the morning, Travis wakes up to Pat banging on his door. Not even his front door. The goddamn bedroom.

“I’m taking your key back,” Travis mumbles under his breath, scrubbing at his eyes as he drags his heavy legs to the door. This is better than when he doesn’t hear from Pats for thirty-six hours after a bad game, but he’s tired.

“I need your help,” Patty says. Travis looks him over. He’s got his gross clippers in his hand.

Travis is awake. “Yeah. OK,” he says. “Let me put on pants.”

He really needs to do laundry. And buy more sweatpants. He hears Pat clattering around in his kitchen for coffee filters.

When he joins Patty in the bathroom, Pats has _less_ clothes on for some reason, which doesn’t seem right. “Dude, I’m not shaving your chest hair.”

“Fuck no, I need it,” Pat mutters, which, true. He’s still got a little of that baby softness to him, but the hair is thicker than you’d think. On his arms, too. You don’t really notice it because of how his face is. “Had a bunch of hair in my shirt last time, it itched like fuck. I’ll just shower after.”

He hands Travis the clippers, and Travis plugs them in before hopping up on the counter.

“Shut up,” he says.

“Didn’t say anything.”

“You wanna do this by yourself?”

“No,” Pats says, but he doesn’t do anything about his smirking mouth as he starts to pile his hair up on the top of his head. He turns his back to Travis. Travis always forgets he has those freckles on his shoulders.

Travis shifts around. There’s really no comfortable way to kneel on a granite bathroom sink. “Here, you missed—” he says, reaching out to snag some stray locks of hair and lift them up so Pat can add them to the big mess on top. The apartment is starting to smell like coffee.

Doing this when they aren’t both plastered is different.

First off, the fact that it’s actually daytime means the sunlight shows up all the uneven patches in the buzzed part of Patty’s hair, even though it’s grown out a little. He can fix that now, at least.

Also, he’s like—it’s not like he hadn’t been _aware_ of the stitches before. The stitches had been the whole point. But he doesn’t remember if he had shaved around them, or just gone over them, or what. Not like Patty would have complained even if he’d ripped half of them by accident.

“Ready?” Travis asks, turning the clippers on. Was the buzz so loud last time? He checks to make sure the best guard is on to get the right length. No Skrillex.

“Obviously,” Patty says. Travis rolls his eyes at the back of his head.

“You want anything different, or—’

“Same is good.”

Hell yeah. “OK.” Travis takes a deep breath and leans in to get started.

And—

Like, Travis assumes he must have been touching Pat this much the first time. You have to, to keep your hands steady at all. He has to spread his left hand carefully across Pat’s skull just to brace himself to make the first pass.

Seeing the stripe of slightly shorter hair appear as he drags the clippers down makes his stomach flip. Jesus. Good thing he was nearly blackout when the long bits went.

The hair catching on the buzzing razor makes a sizzling noise like a lighting match. Travis works slowly, tongue between his teeth. When he gets to the stitches, he takes shorter strokes, just enough to clean things up without putting any pressure on the angry pink skin. It takes a lot of concentration. It’s a little easier if he lets his forearms rest against Patty’s shoulders for extra stability. He’s warm—all that just-rolled-outta-bed heat still thick on him. Travis could still be dreaming.

To his credit, Pats doesn’t move once the whole time. Good. Travis has to focus. If Pat is going to trust him with this, he’s gonna do a good job.

Patty’s arms start to shake from holding his hair up right as Travis finishes. He triple-checks that he didn’t miss any bits this time, running his thumb quickly through the shaved section to make sure it all feels like the same length.

“Should get you some barrettes or something,” Travis says, turning the clippers off and brushing the stray hair trimmings from Patty’s shoulders. They almost blend in with the freckles. Then Pat lets his hair fall back down, and it all disappears. Now you see it. Now you don’t.

“Gonna shower,” Pats says, stepping away from the sink and rubbing at one of his biceps.

“Cool, I’m gonna go back to sleep,” Travis says, clambering down off of the counter. Patty hasn’t moved. “What, here?”

“Yeah,” Pat says, short, opening the shower door and turning it on. He hasn’t even turned around to look at Travis or check the trim in the mirror. Weirdo. Travis kicks him lightly in the back of the ankle on his way out of the bathroom.

“‘Gosh, TK, thank you for helping me at ass o’clock in the morning,’” he says, pitching his voice low and dumb and loud enough to be heard over the shower.

“It’s almost noon,” Patty calls after him, and Travis grins.

“Don’t use all my conditioner,” he shouts back. By the time he’s loaded an armful of sweats into the washing machine, the coffee is done. He pulls two mugs out of the cabinet. He figures Pats is staying.

\---

He runs out of shampoo before he runs out of conditioner. He’s half-tempted to just use soap on his hair, but Provy will know, somehow.

CVS has too many goddamn options. How are you supposed to pick? He doesn’t need the stuff for color-treated hair, but that’s about his only clue. Does he want to be volumized? Heh. Probably not.

He grabs a two-pack of Irish Spring, like he always does.

Is there anything else here he needs before he heads home? He’s got a whiteboard by the door for this stuff, but he hasn’t remembered to add anything to it in months. Plus he’d accidentally used a Sharpie one time, so it’s gonna say “bourbon” forever. The system might need work. Maybe he’ll buy toilet paper just in case. It’s not like it goes bad.

He stops in his tracks on the way out of the beauty section. Hair stuff.

Well, it’s all hair stuff. But, like. Barrettes and shit. Shit that Travis doesn’t even know the name of. He doesn’t have any sisters.

He reaches out and flicks at the glittery plastic baubles on one of them. Patty would kill him. Which normally would be reason to drop like fifty bucks on one of everything, but—whatever. It doesn’t seem as fun as usual.

Pat does need something to keep the hair up off his neck, though. Like. Assuming he wants to keep that part short.

Travis pulls one pack of plain black rubber bands off the rack. They say “no snag.” That sounds good. He drops them in his basket with the shampoo and moves on.

He comes back after getting toilet paper to grab another set in orange.

\---

They claw a win away from Pitt, which is fucking _sick_ for what feels like maybe thirty seconds. Travis buys Provy sugary thank-you shots for saving their asses, and Provy is too polite to say no, and Travis is too hyped up to count.

Provy pukes electric blue in the bar bathroom while Patty laughs until he cries.

Then the Habs come to town, and they’re so close, they’re _so_ close to a playoffs spot, they’re only one goal down in the third and they’re throwing everything at them, something _has_ to work, they can still make this season worth something. They pull Hartsy, and they actually put Travis out in an empty-net situation for once, they trust him for _once,_ and then Travis is sliding pathetically into his own net watching fucking Domi celebrate the ENG.

He doesn’t think about breaking his stick off on the post. It just happens. It doesn’t help.

Slamming his fist on the steering wheel about a dozen times once he’s in the car doesn’t really help, either, but it does tire him out some, which is almost the same thing.

He takes a few deep breaths and lets his head drop against the wheel. “Sorry.”

Patty grunts. He’s got his eyes on his phone. He’s gotta stay off Twitter. “You want me to drive?”

Travis closes his eyes. “No.” He wants to drive. That’s something he can do. He takes another deep breath. “Sorry. Give me a minute.” It feels like they’re already out of time.

“Not going anywhere,” Pats says.

\---

Travis wakes up on a Sunday off to the sound of—something. He’d been dreaming about canoeing, which had been nice. Then his dream-canoe had turned into a lawnmower. And then started sinking. He blinks blearily at the ceiling. A moment of silence, and then the ceiling rattles again.

He sighs and rolls out of bed.

Pat’s door isn’t even locked.

His living room coffee table is in the hall. Travis picks his way around it.

Patty is in the process of shoving his couch across his living room. Travis doesn’t know why. It’s not important.

Pats has his hair pulled back.

“Fuck,” Patty says, pausing and stepping back from the couch. He’s sweating a little bit. “Did I wake you up?”

“What?” Travis says. He’s pretty sure that’s an orange hair tie.

A chunk of hair is loose. Pat tucks it back behind his ear. “I—fuck, I don’t know,” he says, leaning his elbows back down on the couch. It’s not quite a ponytail, more like a half-assed sort of bun thing. You can really see the shaved-down part like this. Travis shoves his hands in the pockets of his sweatpants. “I woke up and I hated, like, everything in this room,” Patty says, flat. “Thought moving it around might help, I don’t know.”

The two armchairs are clustered in a sunny spot by the windows. The rug is halfway rolled-up and shoved to the other side of the room. “Yeah?” Travis says, rocking on his heels.

“Yeah.”  
  
Travis is pretty sure there used to be a dining table in here. “Did it work?”

“Oh, yeah, totally,” Patty says flatly, but he makes eye contact with Travis, finally, and Travis has to laugh a little.

“I dunno,” Travis says. “I kinda like the coffee table in the hallway, you could do a sort of obstacle course thing.”

Pats grins back at him. His hair falls back in his face, and he blows at it to get it out of his eyes. “I think I want to trash all of it,” Patty says. “Is that crazy?”

Travis tips his head from side to side, easing a crick out of his neck. “No comment,” he says, which makes Pat smile wider. “I mean, you didn’t pick out any of this shit, right?” Patty shakes his head.

Travis’s mom had helped him with some of the furniture in his place when he moved in—the basketball hoop had been from his brother, though. Real dorm room shit. Not that Travis or Patty has ever been in a dorm room.

“OK.” Travis eyeballs the size of the stuff. God, it really is beige. Gross. This is something Travis can help with. “How can we get it out of here? Freight elevator?”

Crazy isn’t the worst thing in the world. Travis feels crazy stuff all the time.

“Yeah?” Pats says.

“Yeah.” Travis rolls his shoulders and cracks his neck one more time. “Anything you want to keep?”

Pat does a quick scan of the living room, hands on his hips. He’s gotta get better at standing up straight. “Maybe the couch,” he says. “I don’t hate the couch.”

Travis nods and goes to finish rolling up the rug. “The couch has been good to us.”

He follows Pat down the hallway to the freight elevator, watches his hair slowly slip out of the hair tie, and feels crazy.

\---

The couch has been good to them. Travis has lots of memories on that couch—it’s been his second-most common sleeping spot for the past year. Even pretty comfy for it now that he’s moved some of his throw pillows up from his place. Most of the other furniture in Pat’s apartment, though—he can’t pick out any particular moments with, like, the chairs. He tries to imagine Pat legit sitting in an armchair and snorts.

Most of his memories of Patty’s apartment are just—Patty. Patty burning eggs and cursing, Patty laughing til he chokes at some dumbshit movie, Patty sitting so still and quiet on a Sunday morning that Travis has to double-check that he’s breathing, watching the soft rise and fall of his chest and then pegging a throw pillow at his head.

Patty in his game day suit, ripping his tie over his head, so pale and furious that Travis hadn’t even made a joke about having to re-tie it for him.

Winter. Freezing but no snow. Before the trade deadline, before Hartsy had shamed them all into going on that run of wins and crawling out of last place, back when it was just loss after loss and Hexy and Hak were gone and everyone was pretending Simmer was staying and yeah, time was passing, but like dream time, the way the days had stretched and dragged and disappeared—

That whole night had felt like a dream, Pats standing in his kitchen and Travis having no idea what to do or how to move.

“Bud, I know—” Travis had started. Zero plan of how to finish the sentence. Probably a good thing that Pat had cut him off.

“I’d blow it up,” he’d said. So quiet and low Travis had barely made it out. He’d been leaning back against his kitchen counter, arms crossed, head down, hair in his face. “If I were them.” Travis had swallowed. “Why not? Blow the, blow the whole team up, start again.” Patty had pushed his hair off his face and looked up at the ceiling. “No point worrying about the rest of this season, right? What’s the fucking point?” It had been late. He’d looked washed-out. Drained. He’d looked how Travis had been trying not to feel.

“So we’ll start again next year,” Travis had said, inching his way into the kitchen. Pat’s kitchen. Always easy to forget whose place they were in. Same floor plan, same appliances.

Pats had looked at him like he was an idiot—not in a funny way. “You really think—”

“—like, fuck, Patty, I know this has been shitty, but we’re not that far off, we’ve just gotta try—”

“—that’s not—”

“—I hate losing too, you fucking know I—”

“—Jesus, I don’t give a fuck that we’re _bad!”_ Patty had shouted, really _shouted_, and Travis had actually taken a step back. Not so much from the volume, though that had been a surprise. More from the words.

Pat hadn’t moved an inch.

Still curled in on himself and gray under the kitchen lights in the middle of the night. Breathing heavy and looking at Travis like he’d expected him to say something, which—fair.

Travis had stepped back in. “Yeah, you do.” Another step. “You care, look at you, of course you do.”

Pats had shaken his head and looked up at the ceiling again. Travis had waited. Watched Pat’s fingers dig deeper and deeper into his own arms. Listened to the hum of the refrigerator, the muffled rush of the traffic outside and twenty stories down.

Eventually— “You’re playing decent, one of the only ones,” Pat had said, voice sharp and clear like it was a media spot— “so they might actually be able to get something good for you in a trade.” He’d kept on looking at the ceiling, almost smiling. “Teams will want you for sure.”

Travis had really, really felt like throwing up. “Pats—”

“Or they’ll be so sick of looking at my fucking face—”

“Stop.”

“—asking why they wasted a second overall on me—”

_”Stop.”_

“—that they’ll ship me off for picks.” Pat had looked at him, finally, meeting Travis’s eyes like a stick to the fucking face. “Or both. Who knows.” He’d shrugged, which would have pissed Travis off if he’d fallen for it.

“Pats. You’re not going anywhere. They won’t trade you—”

“I would.”

“Well thank God you’re not the GM, then, bud, Jesus.” Travis had swallowed and scrubbed a hand through his hair. “That’s what you’re worried about?”

Patty had shrugged again.

Travis doesn’t remember making a decision, just the words that had come out of his mouth. “Then I’ll quit.”

That had taken Patty by surprise and knocked a little of the doom off him, just for a second. Serves him right. Travis will hold onto that forever. “What—”

“I’ll fucking quit, OK?” He’d stepped in one more time, not quite backing Pats further up against the counter but definitely right in his business.

“Trav, shut up—”

“Fuck off, I’m solving the problem, all right?” And he hadn’t—Travis doesn’t know if he had meant it, exactly. He’d meant something. There are different ways to mean things. “They trade one of us, I quit, we’re good—”

“Oh my God.” Pats had sounded like he was maybe gonna cry, but it had turned into something closer to laughing. Travis had made sure. He’d been looking right at him, real close.

“I mean, what, we went to the playoffs already, right?” Travis had raised his eyebrows. “I got a playoffs goal, you got a playoffs goal. More than a lotta people get—”

“Travis,” Pats had said, but it had been muffled because he’d fully dropped his face in his hands.

Travis had kept talking. “I’ll set up a little fishing outfit for tourists, probably make more money than you, eh, you fucking slacker. You can retire if you want, just hang out and be rude to Americans and grow your hair down to your ass—” and that last part had been muffled, too, because Pats had reached out and hauled Travis into a hug, crushing him into his suit jacket and folding him up.

Travis had taken a second. He’d let Patty take his weight. Just for a minute. He’d leaned on his big stupid body and focused on the sounds of his breathing and the shifting of his clothes.

He’d wanted to hug Pat back, but his hands had been pinned between them, useless. He’d let it be.

Patty had sighed. Travis had felt it. “Feels like nothing we do matters.” That had been mumbled mostly into Travis’s hair.

Idiot. Travis had headbutted him lightly in the shoulder and then grinned when he’d made an annoyed noise. “Matters to me.”

Pats had made another noise, a little softer. Then, after a minute— “OK.”

“OK.” Travis had leaned his weight back off him finally, but had grabbed him tight around the waist to tip him away from the stove. Beanpole. So easy to unbalance. Travis had tipped his head back and looked up at him, face red, hair everywhere. “OK?”

“Jesus, yeah, OK.” Patty had dug his fingers into his sides, even though he knows Travis is ticklish, and that’s cheating. “Whatever.”

“You wanna kill something on COD? That always makes you feel better.”

They’d fallen asleep together on the couch. It’s a nice couch.

\---

They have a real day off before they have to play the Leafs again. Nice three-day break. Travis is planning on doing exactly jack shit with this day.

Patty facetimes him.

“I need a ride.”

Travis groans and drops his spoon into his cereal bowl loud enough that Pat should be able to hear it through the phone.

“The guy at the tattoo place says somebody else should be there to drive me home.”

The tattoo parlor is in fucking Fishtown.

Travis wanders around the room looking at the flash sheets on the wall while the artist shaves down Patty’s thigh. It’s been a minute since he’s been in one of these places. He’d given Pats shit for the entire drive up here, but now that he’s in the room, the ducks on his arm are starting to feel lonely.

He scratches his arm absently. He’s been saving doing more work on the sleeve as, like, a thing to do when his real NHL money comes in, but who fucking knows. Might want to stop making assumptions. Maybe should throw a couple deer heads on there while he can.

He looks at a sheet of stylized Jesus stuff and grimaces. He’ll find another shop. Pats can have the real emo shit all to himself.

The artist’s clippers switch off. Travis turns around. Pats always acts like he doesn’t have a thing about needles, because he’s a dumbass. “All right, am I holding your hand or what?”

Patty has his head tipped back and his eyes squeezed shut already, and the artist is still just wiping down his leg. “Yes.”

The artist looks up at Pat from under the brim of his hat. “It’s none of my business, but you know if the site gets aggravated in the next couple of days it can fuck up the linework, right?”

They have a game tomorrow.

Pat grunts. “It’s fine.”

The buzz of the needle kind of zones Travis out. He watches the shape of one of the wings take shape on Patty’s leg and feels the skin of the back of Patty’s hand under his thumb. He doesn’t realize he’s tracing circles until Pat squeezes his hand, hard.

“Would you fucking talk?” Travis looks down at him. “You’re supposed to be, fuck, ouch, distracting me.”

Travis grins. Pats looks more like a wet cat than usual right now. “I thought I was just the driver, bud. I’m gonna raise my rates, you want conversation too.”

Patty somehow makes a face at him without changing his expression at all. “The one time you don’t wanna run your mouth.”

“Why, is there something to talk about?” Travis says, and he doesn’t know why, because he immediately feels so weird he’s gotta just keep talking anyway. “All right, tattoo, new haircut, you got anything else on the list?” He kicks out at the base of the chair absently. “We could stop at the mall and get your ears pierced.”

“What fucking mall,” Pat says, eyes almost all the way closed. “And the hair was your idea, don’t start.” A seed of a smile. “Just ‘cause you don’t have the balls to do anything—”

“Whoa, whoa, what’s with the lashing out?” Travis says, delighted. “Sorry I’m not interesting, dude.”

“You should be sorry,” Patty mumbles. Travis can see the muscles in his leg tensing as he tries not to move under the needle and the artist’s gloved hand. When did he get so big? It sneaks up on Travis sometimes. “If you had to. What would you do?”

Travis shifts on his stool and thinks about it. He kind of thought Pat’s hand would get sweaty after a while, but it’s pretty air-conditioned in here, so it’s just warm. “I dunno.”

Patty snaps a glare up at him. “Pick—ow, fuck—pick something, asshole, I’m dying.”

The answer is more tattoos, Travis had literally just been thinking about it, but— “Dye my hair.”

He mostly wants to make Pat laugh to distract him, make him giggle and go red in the chair, but instead Pat just gives him a weird look. “Why?”

Travis shrugs at him. “Might look cool.”

Pat makes a sort of half-hearted grimace and looks up at the ceiling. “Your hair color is fine.”

Jackpot.

Patty ignores Travis grinning down at him for a pretty impressively long time before finally breaking and making eye contact. “What.”

“You like my hair, bud?”

“I said it was fine.”

Travis snorts and squeezes his hand. “Yeah, that’s, like, the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

Pats scowls and winces. “That’s not true.” He taps a finger against the back of Travis’s hand. “That’s not true.”

“Sure.”

“It’s a nice brown.”

“Wow.” Travis is gonna make him regret this every day for the rest of their lives. “That’s beautiful, bud.”

Pat rolls his eyes. “What color would you change it to, then, asshole.”

“Pink.”

Pats chokes.

“What, you don’t like pink? Grow up, Patty.”

Pat snorts. “That would look fucking hideous with orange.”

Travis is making all of this up as he goes, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to give an inch. “So?”

“We wear orange, like, every fucking day, bro.”

“And so I should dye it, what? Blue? Look like a fucking Islander?” That’s enough to get Travis what he wants, Patty’s face scrunched up and finally dissolving into wheezy little giggles. “That’s what you want for me? Brutal, Pats.” He remembers the first time he made Pats laugh like that, fucking forever ago, when it was just the slapped-ass red face and the little flowers on his arm that made him seem like he might not be the same as every other green kid.

The tattoo is sick when it’s finished. Travis looks at the raw, exposed heart and manages not to reach out and touch it. Pat’s leg hair is pretty thick, the shaved patch obvious. He could make a joke about helping Patty shave the rest of his leg, but he’s not sure what the punchline would be. If Pats asked he’d be happy to.

There’s a lane closed on the Vine Expressway because something is under construction. Something’s always under construction around here. Travis feels like the city shifts under his feet every day. Traffic inches along through the one open lane. It’s getting warm in the car, but Travis doesn’t want to give in and turn the A/C on yet. It’s only April.

“So are we talking pastel?” Patty says. Travis lolls his head over to look at him. Pats raises an eyebrow. “Or hot pink?”

“Oh, hot for sure,” Travis says. “What do I look like to you? Come on.” Pat smiles and shakes his head. “Pastel. Please. Ridiculous.”

\---

Travis wakes up from a dream about painting Patty’s toenails for him. He stares at the ceiling until his hard-on goes away.

\---

Pat grits his teeth and plays in the Leafs game. The trainers see the bandage on his leg, but they don’t bother asking any questions. Neither does G, who just raises his eyebrows at Travis in the dressing room like Travis is gonna have answers.

Travis does get a goal, which is a relief. Starts a comeback, even, though it would be nice to win without having to start from the bottom of a hole every time. Hartsy stands tall in the shootout, and they claw back a W. Travis slaps the side of Patty’s thigh as they get undressed and laughs when he flinches. “Good luck, eh?”

There are four games left in the season.

They lose them all.

\---

Travis had expected it to feel different when the season ended. He bumps shoulders with Patty as they skate off the ice. It still hurts to lose, a little, which is probably a good thing. He mostly just feels tired.

Pat won’t look at him in the locker room. His fingers fumble on his skate laces. Travis could push his hand away. Kneel in front of him and unlace one skate at a time until they both were breathing again. That’s something he could do.

He googles _flights philadelphia toronto_ on his phone. He can be home in two days.

It’s only April.

\---

Provy, of all people, bullies them into going out, a flurry of texts and emojis in the team thread.

Travis squints at his phone, chin tucked into his chest where he’s laid out on his couch. The screen is bright in the darkness of his living room. He could turn on a lamp, but he’s feeling like being a sad bastard. Pats had barely said a word in the car on the way home.

He pulls up their text thread.

_you coming?_  
_do it for provy_

He doesn’t have to wait long.

_ugh_  
_he’s staying here for the summer_  
_scared none of the rest of us are coming back_

Travis frowns.

_harsh_

He can hear footsteps upstairs.

_be down in a minute_

They take an Uber. Travis wants to drink.

Provy, god bless him, has tacky and expensive tastes in bars—which means they don’t have to fight hard to get a corner of the place to themselves. When Travis and Pats roll in a solid half an hour late, Laughts and Raff look to be on their third beers each, and G has a pitcher of something frozen in front of him. Looks like it’s got a mini bottle of rosé tipped into it. Travis didn’t think he would come. It’s nice.

“Go sit, I’ll get you your baby juice,” Travis says to Pat, elbowing him toward the tables and ignoring his grumbling. He doesn’t know why Patty worries so much about getting carded, but Travis doesn’t mind ordering his drinks for him. Pat will turn twenty-one soon enough. Travis won’t be doing it for that much longer.

He slides into the table and sets the vodka soda in front of Pats—it looks just like seltzer, whatever, it keeps Patty from looking over his shoulder every thirty seconds—and Jake immediately throws an arm around his shoulder.

“TK, help me out here,” he says, gesturing with a beer across the table at Provy. “This one, he’s about two fucking seconds away from buying a house in Jersey—”

Provy has his nervous little panic-smile on. “Or the Main Line, I don’t—”

G tips his head back and groans. “The _taxes.”_

“—I don’t give a fuck where it is, kid,” Jake says. Travis grins across the table at Provy. He glances over at Patty, but he’s just stabbing at the ice in his drink with the straw. “The point is, you’re, what, twenty?

  
“I’m twenty-two—”

“—you’re fifteen fucking years old, you should be in the city, getting laid, not cooped up in some five-bedroom fucking tomb—”

“My girlfriend and I have a great sex life—”

  
“Gross,” Travis interjects. Provy kicks him under the table, and Jake cheers.

“You having a midlife crisis already, Jakey?” G asks, peering at him over his drink and spinning a paper umbrella in his hand. “Another one?”

Jake grips Travis by the back of his neck and shakes him a little. “TK agrees with me, doesn’t he? Also, fuck you, this is still the same crisis,” he says, which barks a laugh out of G. “I’ve got stamina.”

Travis drops his head onto Jake’s shoulder. “I might buy a house, actually.”

“Since when?” Patty rumbles to his left. Travis looks over. Pats is giving him full bitch-squint.

“There’s another house on one of the blocks we’re looking at in Haddonfield,” Provy says, and Travis looks back over at him. Aw. He looks so excited.

“Not here. At home, in Ontario,” Travis says. He sits up off Jake and looks at Patty. “Dude, we definitely talked about this.”

“I thought you meant, like, a fishing cabin or something.” The bar’s ugly purple neon light fixtures have him lit up from the back. “Not, like, a real house.”

In fairness, Travis is pretty sure they’d been crossfaded when he’d brought it up. He spins his beer bottle in his hands. “It could be both.” Waterfront property. Close to family. Some real acreage for hunting on. It’s stupid to think about before he has his new contract, but Travis has always been stupid about the things he really wants.

“That’s fine, that’s different,” Jake says, and Travis snaps back to the rest of the table. “Just stay in the city during the season.”

At least somebody thinks he’ll still be here next year.

“You gotta get a new place, though,” G says. He’s been sinking on his elbows closer and closer to the table. “What the fuck are you still doing on Broad? That’s not even a neighborhood. At least go to Rittenhouse, Jesus Christ.”

Provy grimaces. “He’s got a point.”

Travis shrugs. “It’s fine. It’s convenient.” He remembers his beer and takes a sip. “It’s home.”

G shakes his head. “I miss Simmer,” he says. Travis cocks his head and tries to make the connection as G pushes back from the table. “You kids drive me to drink. Come on, Provy, this was your idea, you’re buying the next round.”

“I bought the first round,” Provy says, but he gets up, and Jake follows them.

Travis could hop to the next table and say hi to Ghost and Sanny, or go bother Laughts and Raff off in their own booth.

He looks over at Pats, who is slowly rolling the wrapper from his straw between his fingers. “Sorry,” Pats mumbles.

“For what?”

Patty sighs. The lights in here must have some sort of programming. They’ve faded to a softer pink now.

Travis presses their legs together under the table. “I’m gonna need your help.”

That finally gets Pat to look up at him. “What?”

“What the fuck do I know about buying a house?” Travis says. He grins at Pat. “Gonna end up picking one that has, like, a ball pit, or something. Or ghosts.”

Pat snorts. “You’d just make the ghosts watch you play Halo.”

Travis raises his eyebrows. “Yeah, and they’d fucking love it.” Patty breaks, snickering into his drink. “They didn’t have first-person shooters in, like, pioneer times, they missed out on so much.”

“You’re real generous, Trav.”

Travis knocks his knee against Patty’s again. Pats is a bony motherfucker, but he’s still there. “You gotta help me move furniture, at least.”

“Jesus.”

“You owe me one.”

“Shut up.”

“Or at least tell me what furniture you like.” Pats raises his eyebrows. “So I don’t wake up and find out you’ve trashed half my shit.”

Travis probably would do a fine job picking a house by himself. He knows what he needs and what he can live without. He can live with whatever ghosts show up.

Patty fixes him with a look in the blue lights. He tucks his hair behind his ear. “OK.”

“OK,” Travis says, tracking the careful curled-up movements of Pat’s fingers. He's lost track of what he’s agreeing to. “Good.”

They both take sips of their drinks. There’s no one left sitting across from them, so when Travis takes a second to look away he’s just staring at a blank wall. He can hear Sanny and Ghost yelling at each other about Jurassic Park.

“What should I do with...” Pat says. Travis looks away from the blank wall in time to see him gesture vaguely toward the back of his head.

“What, bud.”

Patty rolls his eyes in the purple light. “My hair.” He picks up the straw wrapper and starts rolling it up again. “For the offseason. Could grow it out, I guess.”

“No,” Travis says, eyes on Pat’s hands. He’s started biting his nails again. There’s a little raw stripe near his thumbnail that’s probably red in better light. Maybe it shouldn’t matter so much what Pat does with his hair. If they were sitting in some anonymous college bar, it probably wouldn’t.

“No?” The straw wrapper is a tight little cylinder now. Pats rolls it between his fingertips. “Stitches are all healed up now.”

The stitches were healed before. “It suits you,” Travis says. He likes to search for little glimpses of the fuzzy bit sometimes. It’s nice to know that it’s there. That Travis knows that it’s there. And he thinks Pat needs it.

Patty looks up at him. “Could cut it all off, too.”

Travis makes a face. “No.” He knows Pat had short hair when they met, real clean-cut high-draft bastard shit. But when he tries to think of it now, what he looked like, the real Pats just floats up in his brain. “No way.”

“Might be a fresh start.”

Travis scratches at the corner of the label on his beer until it pulls away. “Do you want a fresh start?”

Pats doesn’t say anything for a minute. Travis bounces his leg.

“I guess I could find someone to trim it over the summer—”

“No.” Travis imagines some professional in a salon with gloved hands trying to make small talk with Pats. Or—or somebody else doing it. Anybody else doing it for him. “No.”

“No?”

What if they didn’t do a good job? What if they didn’t understand what it meant? What if they did? “No.”

He looks up. Pats is looking at him in the purple light. Maybe it shouldn’t matter so much. He can’t imagine how it wouldn’t.

Patty puts down the straw wrapper. When he lets go, it unwinds shakily into a spiral on the table. “Take me home.”

Travis swallows and gets out his phone. “OK.”

\---

Travis had assumed they’d go to his place, but in the elevator Pats presses the button for his own floor. Travis follows him.

It’s feels emptier in here at night, just the couch floating alone. It looks like Pat has already packed up his XBOX. It looks like he’s packed up most of his shit.

Travis rocks back on his heels. “I’m not—” he starts, and Patty whips around to fix him with a look. Jesus, when did it get so easy to scare him? “Pats, I’m not doing any goodbye shit, OK?”

Pats scrubs a hand through his hair and slouches. Travis fucking knew it. “Trav—”

“Like, I don’t know what—whatever’s happening, don’t fucking do it just because you think this is, that it’s—” God, he’s thought it before, why is it so hard to say it out loud? “—that this is the last chance, or whatever—”

“It might be.”

  
Travis wants to kill him, standing there detached in the dark. “It might not be!”

“OK.”

“‘OK,’ what, what does ‘OK’—”

“Trav, can you just—” Pats leans back against the couch, and then slides to sit down on one of the armrests, hunched over with his elbows on his knees. “Can you just, like, be here for a second.”

Oh. Travis can do that.

The floors creak a little as Travis steps in close. Patty doesn’t look up. Fuck it. Travis reaches out and rests a hand on the crown of his head.

His hair feels nice and soft. “Did you get new conditioner?”

Pat leans forward, thunking his forehead against Travis’s chest, and starts laughing silently.

“I’m just saying,” Travis says.

“Provy gave it to me,” Patty mumbles. Travis combs his fingers through his hair. Pats sighs and—and puts his hands on Travis’s waist. Not holding or pulling. Just resting there.

“Oh, so Provy takes care of you now.” Patty hums. “Feels nice.” He scratches a little at Pat’s scalp and grins when he makes a low noise. “Oh my God, you’re like a kitty cat.”

That does make Pat dig his fingers in. Travis swallows.

He lets his hand slide lower, scratching his fingers through the fuzz of the shaved-down section. His fingers catch on a raised, smooth line—the scar.

“Scared the shit out of me,” he says. The way Patty had dropped, hadn’t moved. The blood on the ice. Just an accident. No one to fight.

“Scared me too,” Pat mumbles into Travis’s shirt. Travis looks down. He’s never said that before. “I was glad you were there.”

Travis remembers the weight of him leaning on his shoulder as they’d skated off the ice together, Patty’s hair hanging in his face. “I wanted to help.”

“I know.” Pat is quiet for a moment. Travis watches the way his back expands as he breathes and rubs a thumb over the scar tissue. “I like it. How you help me.”

Travis’s hand goes still.

Having Patty in his passenger seat. Making sure his tie is done up just right. Buying him drinks. Knocking down anyone who touches him. Taking everything that might drown him and pouring it into Pats. He feels suddenly naked, he’s on a cliff, he’s sorry—

Patty’s grip on his waist gets tighter. “I really—Trav, I _really_ like it.”

He still has his forehead pressed against Travis’s chest. Travis feels warm where they’re touching. Where Pat is breathing, slow and even, even though he sounds nervous.

He sounds nervous.

“Me too,” Travis says. Fuck, it’s quiet. “I like it too.” This empty-ass room makes everything echo. “Thanks for letting me.”

Pats takes in a sharp breath through his teeth, the kind that normally means Travis is about to get his ass handed to him. _”’Letting’ you,”_ he says, and then Travis’s world narrows to the place where he can feel Pat pressing his lips to his chest, brief and impossible to take back. “Letting you, Trav, Jesus Christ—”

He doesn’t get any further than that, because Travis has been being good and not doing anything stupid for as long as he’s willing tonight. He takes Pat’s head in both hands and tips it back, and there’s his face, his horrible face and his shining eyes, and Travis would quit tomorrow if it meant he got to keep him and his fuck-you hair and his embarrassing tattoos.

“Kiss me,” Pats says, and Travis does as he’s told.

\---

“Talk to me.”

\---

“Do that again.”

\---

When Patty tells him, gasping, with Travis’s hand in his hair and teeth in his neck—

“Jesus, when you’d trim my hair, fuck,” and Travis had hissed, remembering. “I got so hard I had to jerk off in your shower.”

In theory there’s enough time for Travis to get naked, too, but he’s more focused on getting Pat’s clothes off—”Let me, let me,” shirt over the head, tripping over underwear—and into his bathroom, and then Patty is hard and flushed and wet and waiting, and nothing really matters to Travis more than following him into the shower and dropping to his knees as the water pounds down and soaks him to the skin.

He can do laundry in the morning.

\---

The wet clothes are more of an issue when Pats is trying to get a hand down his shorts, which are sticking to him, but when he gets there his hand is warm, and Travis has been hard for nearly an hour, so all it takes is—

“Look at me.”

—and Travis does, and Pat feels good, and he looks _good,_ Travis made him feel good, and it’s never going to take any more than that.

\---

Patty leaves Travis’s soaked clothes in a pile in his sink. Travis doesn’t remember how they came off.

\---

At least Patty hasn’t gotten rid of his bed yet. The couch is pretty comfortable. Turns out the bed is better.

Pat rumbles something into his neck.

“What?” Travis yawns. Part of him wants to stay up all night. That had seemed like a better idea before the orgasm. There will be time in the morning.

“Stay.”

Travis rolls his eyes at the ceiling. “Look like I’m going anywhere?” Pats has an arm around Travis’s waist and a leg hooked around his knee. Octopus. “You don’t have to tell me to do _that.”_

Pats squeezes his arm tighter. “I know.”

“And I’m pretty sure I can’t use my legs, anyway.”

Pat snorts. It tickles.

“Lower buddy injury.”

“Shut up and sleep, Trav.”

“OK.” Travis lets his eyes drift closed.

He opens them again.

He rolls over so he’s facing Pat, still under his arm. Pat doesn’t open his eyes. He’s not asleep yet.

Travis usually doesn’t mind letting him pretend. There’s time, but not enough for that tonight.

“I’m glad you want me to stay,” he says. A little line smoothes between Patty’s eyebrows. “With you.”

Pat huffs out a breath.

“I like it,” Travis says. He smiles, because Pat will hear it even if he doesn’t see it. “I really like it.”

Patty’s lips barely move. “OK.”

“Idiot,” Travis says. He rolls back over, still in Pat’s deathgrip. “Don’t let anybody else touch your hair.”

**Author's Note:**

> man, that would have been way more of a bummer if tk hadn't signed, huh?
> 
> RIP patty's long hair, i know you'll be back
> 
> title, of course, from lorde's "buzzcut season"
> 
> thank you as always to kingsoftheimpossible and angularmomentum for hauling my ass over the finish line. i love you.
> 
> i definitely fudged some things, but in general this story tracks with the real events of the back half of the 18-19 season. hopefully it still makes sense even if you weren't watching flyers games, but here are a few tidbits for you if you're interested:
> 
>   * [patty’s injury](https://hyggles.tumblr.com/post/183416729294/wellheregoesn0thing-patrick-left-the-game-today) against the islanders aka The Inciting Incident
>   * part of the referenced [shenanigans against the devils](https://hyggles.tumblr.com/post/184443305244/i-hate-hockey-feisty-boy-njdvsphi-312019)
>   * the referenced [playoffs goals](https://hyggles.tumblr.com/post/186259097309/wellheregoesn0thing-first-playoff-goals)
>   * provy's [heroics](https://hyggles.tumblr.com/post/183552640609/faceoffs-ivan-provorov-makes-the-save-on-the) against the pens
>   * the [habs ENG :(](https://hyggles.tumblr.com/post/183577163984/i-hate-hockey-phivsmtl-3192019)
>   * the [end of the season](https://hyggles.tumblr.com/post/183826519734) mood


End file.
